Questions for Lestat: Lestat's Lab

[Lestat]

Ran out? can help with that wolfy. And no worries, wasn't going into specifics, merely pointing out the way the noxious crap in fiddleheads acts, you can draw your own conclusions from that data well enough.

Fucking poor rotten unfortunate bastards, starving to death whilst having food to eat. Rough way to go, I bet it was slow as hell before it killed those explorers.

And as for do I have a use for thiaminase? as it happens, methinks I may well just do. Would be neat to try an enzymatic synthesis of chlormethiazole, for the cleavage step to replace bisulfite/metabisulfite, and save me an annoying, tedious, stinky sulfurous workup and tons of sulfur dioxide to deal with. If I could do it enzymatically it would be perfectly clean, just heat sufficiently afterwards to denature the thiaminase, and no nothing, as far as working the intermediate thiazolylethanol up is concerned.

Theres TONS of bracken round here. I'd sooner use a fern species that doesn't contain ptaquiloside though, or cyanide. The cyanide I can deal with but those illudanes are fucking heinously toxic. I'd need to make DAMN sure it didn't follow through, distil the chlormethiazole freebase, check it by TLC etc.

Intrigiungly enough, ptaquiloside shows great structural similarity with a pair of toxins from the mycological sphere, illudin-S and illudin-M, from mushrooms in the genus Omphalotus, the jac;'o'lanterns, so called for the eerie green glow of the bioluminescent gills. Although I haven't ever seen any of them in the wild, Omphalotus olearius grows here in the UK, but its very, very VERY rare, with only a handful of recorded sightings in the UK. They are primarily a genus of hotter countries,  that species associates itself with olive trees mainly iirc, but theres a host tree available in the UK, oak i think, or possibly sweet chestnut.

Won't kill if eaten usually if ever, but they do make unfortunate pickers that mistake them for the edible and very tasty chanterelle, but those never have  true gills, merely forked, shallow pseudogills, just ribs baring the fertile hymenium, where Omphalotus all have very decurrent true gills, and always grow on wood, which the chanterelle does not ever do., the interesting bit, is that the illudins (not illudANES on the whole, but specifically illudin-S and illudin-M were looked at as lead compounds in the search for new anticancer stuff.

Makes me wonder if the pharm companies thought to examine ptaquiloside in a high throughput screening

[WolFish]

i am back on stimulants, no worries there.

and the fiddleheads have gone the way of most things i want to try these days. they were canadian, the only diff i can think of, and it took three tries before the water didn't turn brown. then two boilings to get that water clean. i tasted a little bit of one and it was - green. probably why i like them, i like things that taste green. at any rate i put the in the fridge a week ago and forgot to put the top on. i will be tossing them today. usually i eat a few before that happens, but i probably was too wary of so much brown in the water.

i buy my mushrooms in the grocery store and i don't always trust them since our grocery store is of less desirable provenance.

[Lestat]

Well I'd trust your mushrooms a lot more than I would your (or anyone elses, or anywhere elses of any KIND elses) fiddleheads.

Although I hold things that taste green in the highest and most putrescent degree of tartarus-sharted unspeakable abomination.

Although I don't know what ptaquiloside looks like in isolated form. The green glow of the Omphalotus spp (the jackolantern mushrooms) is from, as far as I know, a luciferin-luciferase type reaction like is used by glow-worms and fireflies.  But generally brown things in water....well....you know whats brown and gets dropped in water (usually), right? lol.
Not laughing at your fiddleheads going off mate, not laughing, and not at your misfortune. But I won't either claim that I do not believe it MISfortune at all. Sorry you spent on them and didn't get to enjoy, but
those things are BAD news. And I am as sure as I can be, that for wolfies they are worse. Not that vegetables really get much worse. Well there are cycad seeds and ODAP, but thats just...way beyond nasty as hell *shudders* poor fucking bastards*

[WolFish]

guess i shouldn't eat grass either?
no clue what kind it was; when i was a kid i ate anything growing in fields and away from dog walking places.
now it's limited to things like asparagus, which also tastes green. these days even the pristine fields are not so anymore.

[Lestat]

Probably not, no. That'd make you a sheep in wolf's clothing :P:P
On the whole I doubt its likely to do you any harm, but people aren't meant for digesting cellulose.  Even most grass-eaters depend on microbial gut populations, extensive fermentation, or both to do it. Termites even cannot themselves digest cellulose, its only because of their gut flora that they are able to.

[WolFish]

Probably not, no. That'd make you a sheep in wolf's clothing :P:P
On the whole I doubt its likely to do you any harm, but people aren't meant for digesting cellulose.  Even most grass-eaters depend on microbial gut populations, extensive fermentation, or both to do it. Termites even cannot themselves digest cellulose, its only because of their gut flora that they are able to.

so maybe i shouldn't eat?
http://foodbabe.com/2013/10/07/are-you-eating-this-substance-that-lines-food-industry-pockets/

[Queen Victoria]

One of my favorite questions to ask children is, "Do you eat grass?"  Most will say, "No."  Then I'll ask if they eat popcorn. 

In my book popcorn is a grass.  And I like it very much, thank you.

Ditto for wheat, oats, etc.

[WolFish]

One of my favorite questions to ask children is, "Do you eat grass?"  Most will say, "No."  Then I'll ask if they eat popcorn. 

In my book popcorn is a grass.  And I like it very much, thank you.

Ditto for wheat, oats, etc.

i can eat wheatgrass but prefer to make it into juice. delicious. very green tasting. if it's too concentrated there is a licorice flavor that's not my favorite, but otherwise i get it whenever i'm someplace they press it.
i like popcorn grass very much.

[Lestat]

First time I've EVER heard of wheatgrass being described as pleasant that! liquorice is lovely though; I bought myself a big bagful of it


And wolves, when they are in sheep's clothing the way nature intended, generally come out wearing a string of bowels draped over their shoulders like one of those hawiian thingies (these mind you at least USUALLY being made of flowers!):D:D:D:D:D

QV, most kids your right, the rest, like wolfy would say something like 'gnnarrffle?...y'snorkf??'

[renaeden]

A Hawaiian thingy is called a lei. I think.

["couldbecousin"]

A Hawaiian thingy is called a lei. I think.

  Yes, and it's made from flowers, not bowels. 

[Lestat]

Just as well we now know that CBC darling, now nobody needs look a fool having erroneously draped a string of bowels round our necks instead of flowers:P

["couldbecousin"]

Just as well we now know that CBC darling, now nobody needs look a fool having erroneously draped a string of bowels round our necks instead of flowers:P

  I once knew a little old lady who spelled  "bowl"  as  "bowel."  Awww! 

[Lestat]

I've noticed that since my memory and related issues became severe, I've started constantly catching myself using the wrong spelling for words where two meanings and spellings but similar or identical pronunciations, and Switching homophones. E.g 'bowl' and 'bole' or 'time' and 'thyme' although for some reason it doesn't  affect abbreviations much, either with words or other abbreviations, such as I'd be unlikely to switch 'STAB' and 'TBAB' (sodium triacetoxyborohydride) for example.

[Lestat]

Added to list of pet hates:

A mixture bumping badly that boiling stones have no effect on, due to being solid-solid and only a few ml of water to facilitate the rxn,

Ammonia generator yesterday decided to start belching not only ammoniacal fumes of the nastiest description but also a foaming slurry of caustic soda and ammonium sulfate, kept backing down into the generator flask, whenever pressure was eased off but annoyingly, barfing again the moment the temporarily McGuyverized vacuum takeoff head-claisen adapter combination was reconnected. And believe you me, DISconnecting the damnable thing was horrid, because that meant standing there while it spewed NH3(g) into the air.